STUPID TRUTH ABOUT LINKWHEELS

[Lostgringo]

First let me introduce myself. My name is Frank and I have been doing SEO for many years. As many of you are aware nobody will learn or know everything about SEO. It is just too comprehensive. I have had a number of SEO teams working for me in the Philippines. Right now we are experimenting on some very powerful linkwheels. Here are a few things I have learned about linkwheels recently. Feel free to correct me and add to this thread.

Ok Let’s Cut the Crap!

Linkwheels can be good or they can be bad!

If they are done wrong they may even harm your website! I know you didn’t want to hear that but it is the truth (IMHO). Let me briefly explain how a Linkwheel can be built correctly.

First step is make sure you use a different proxy for each Web 2.0 property you use! After that just go in and us a VPN to add content anytime. The more comments means a stronger property. Why is this important using a proxy and vpn? You do not want to leave footprints for Google. Each “spoke” or property in the linkwheel is unique if you do this technique Google will not bother you.

The problem with the above method is that it takes time. Nobody offering services for linkwheels wants to take the time to do it right.

The second thing to keep in mind is that these properties will stay with you for a long time. You can comment on your own properties using different emails. That’s something that is time consuming also. After each property is developed you need to go into that property say Squidoo.com with a different email and create another lense for example. Now you can comment on your other Squidoo lense which has a different email and proxy. If you have 10 unique Squidoo lenses you can comment 9 times on each lense.

This is very labor intensive not to mention that you create each property for one keyword or 1 keyword phrase only.

A linkwheel with 6 properties including the Hub would all be targeting the one keyword!

Why is this important? Because when you get the link from these properties the anchor text has that keyword in it! If I am wrong please correct me.

There are other factors that need to be considered to make a reputable Linkwheel that I will touch on later. The key factors here are anonymity!

[Jeremy Kelsall]

I've never used different IP's for "link wheels" and have had decent results.

Granted, mine are not the boring wheel with one post each either - But, they are all the same IP...

[simpleonline1234]

I agree and disagree....your methods are in order however a link wheel can NEVER harm your site in anyway at all.....why? becauase i would simply create a linkwheel using your bad method for all of my competition...

however I DO agree with your methods to the fact that Google will quickly figure out your link wheel and deem your links less valuable to your main site. That is probaly the only way it could "harm" your site.

I would say though your method is dead on as far as not leaving a footprint for Google to run across.

A bit over kill but never the less dead on....thanks for the tip though...never though to use different proxies....

[rapidscc]

Hi Frank,

Thank you for that wonderful post. For those who want to implement Frank's method here's a tool you can use if you're running FireFox.

FOXYPROXY

FoxyProxy is a Firefox extension which automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns. Put simply, FoxyProxy automates the manual process of editing Firefox's Connection Settings dialog. Proxy server switching occurs based on the loading URL and the switching rules you define.

It will save you a lot of time changing proxies.

As for posting contents to linkwheels, you can use iMacros to semi-automate the content posting process.

All the best,

Raul Omar Diaz

[redfoxseo]

Thanks for the post Frankk. I agree that linkwheels may not help. But not sure about them actually hurting you. Just my opinion.

[Jill Carpenter]

Originally Posted by rapidscc

Hi Frank,

Thank you for that wonderful post. For those who want to implement Frank's method here's a tool you can use if you're running FireFox.

FOXYPROXY



It will save you a lot of time changing proxies.

As for posting contents to linkwheels, you can use iMacros to semi-automate the content posting process.

All the best,

Raul Omar Diaz

This feature does not yet work on your platform. Some Ubuntu beta testers have been able to get this to work by tweaking their /etc/hosts file. This problem is being actively investigated and will hopefully be resolved soon. DO NOT BUY FOXYPROXY PLUS FOR THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU ARE USING WINDOWS

Thanks for the thought! I can actually just log out an back in again with my card.

[Gail Sober]

Proxies are for cloaking your ip address right?

How would Google have access to another websites server logs to know what ip address you are posting from?

Maybe I'm not understanding something correctly

[Daniel Brock]

Originally Posted by Gail Sober

Proxies are for cloaking your ip address right?

How would Google have access to another websites server logs to know what ip address you are posting from?

Maybe I'm not understanding something correctly

They are referring to the IPs of your node sites, not the IPs of you post your articles from.

You want to spread your wheels out over a serious of different IPs so that it looks natural and not gamed, so to speak.

[Bryan Zimmerman]

IPRental is an awesome tool for this too. It's a little expensive, but you can change IP's with the click of a button every 2 minutes. The more expensive package you can switch every 2 seconds (not that you'd need it that fast)

[Gail Sober]

They are referring to the IPs of your node sites, not the IPs of you post your articles from.

Ah, of course. I'm just a little slow tonight. lol

Might be time for me to plug in a dvd or something.

[Gail Sober]

Afterthought to my above post: I use Tor: anonymity online for my proxy work. There's also a firefox plugin for it.

[Mike Newton]

Hi Frank,

Good post and I agree with a lot of what you say except that, I don't think that it can harm you but, the Big G and other SE may add less value and the linkwheel sites may risk getting canned or deleted, if they are absolute crap or too spammy.

I also used to get fairly decent results using linkwheels with the one IP. These days, I don't use linkwheels in the traditional sense and my testing has shown that results have improved. The spokes don't all necessarily interlink and the wheels don't close off completely.

Now, I or my VA, make use of different IP + accounts etc for many of the wheels, using a semi-automated process containing a couple of bots and macros which, also assists with avoiding the footprint/farm scenario. In addition, I/we don't usually just throw up one post etc and then leave it at that either.

Overkill? Maybe, but it seems to be working well for all of my sites, across the board.

[Michael Worthington]

I never concerned myself with search engine
placement before; I always spend my efforts
in listbuilding so I'm an SEO dummy which will
explain this question.

What is the difference between a linkwheel
and what's being discussed in this article?

Google Patent Granted on Web Link Spam

I stumbled on this while doing some
research for a set of emails I contracted
to write for a fellow Warrior last week and
it's got me curious.

Michael

[iwebresults]

Originally Posted by Gail Sober

Ah, of course. I'm just a little slow tonight. lol

Might be time for me to plug in a dvd or something.

Please excuse this noobie question if it is dumb, I thought IP only referred to the computer visiting the site, how can a node site have an IP, I thought it would have a URL

[JackPowers]

Originally Posted by Gail Sober

Proxies are for cloaking your ip address right?

How would Google have access to another websites server logs to know what ip address you are posting from?

Maybe I'm not understanding something correctly

I'd like to know that too.